


Right Behind You

by Izzy_Grinch



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Blood and Wine (The Witcher 3 DLC), Epic Friendship, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, La cage au Fou, M/M, Self-Sacrifice, everything Geralt does he does for Regis and Regis only, making Resonance and using it, risking to help each other, watching each other's back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23615530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzy_Grinch/pseuds/Izzy_Grinch
Summary: Among these ancient walls there is no one to help Regis but Geralt. Deep inside the feverish delirium of Resonance there is no one to help Geralt but Regis. They hold onto each other as tight as physically possible.
Relationships: Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Comments: 12
Kudos: 120





	Right Behind You

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Следом за тобой](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21033440) by [Izzy_Grinch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzy_Grinch/pseuds/Izzy_Grinch). 



_I need you with me_

_as I enter the shadows._

Red – Shadows

Tesham Mutna makes him restless. The medallion doesn’t vibrate, and the witcher’s heart is calm, but he can feel it himself − the place is bad and grim. It’s not like the local tales usually are, made up by someone just to scare the villagers; it’s wicked, with sagebrush bitterness in the air, with ash-like dust under their feet, swirling and falling where the soles touched the floor, tailing after a violet mist. Regis is restless too, he wanders from one spot to another in his incorporeal form, although his flouncing is rather calm, as if it’s not panic but curiosity, not annoyance but languid anticipation that makes him search for corners in a circle of sinking walls. He lits the torches, diving into a cold brazier like a serpent woven of nightly haze, and smoothly crawling from the smoldering coals into the next ones. The flickering of his mist fades away with every new burst of flame. They both don’t need any light at all. But the crackling of fire sets off the howling of the swinging chains, they are like pendulums, slicing the frozen time. And the golden flares dance on the rocks, littered with old bones on the floor and covered with slick mold on the walls. The flares remind them of the evenings in crowded taverns, of the bonfire burning when a long day is over, of the sunset wine spilled across the sky. The rotten meat is falling apart and slipping through his fingers. _They_ can already smell it, they crave it, they rush in their halting steps to get it. The wails, the gritting of their teeth, the choking half-growls, half-moans are flooding the tunnels like a river finally freed from its dam.

There’s no sound coming from Regis. He doesn’t make much noise even on the normal days, silently turning pages, crushing flowers of fresh herbs, caressing thoughtfully feathers of his black birds. Crow’s eye for Swallow and a long fight. He drinks down the entire flask and looks around. Regis is standing with his forehead pressed to the cage, its opening like a maw awaiting to devour him whole; he gently touches its bars like the ribs of a haggard bruxa. Geralt catches him halfway inside, holds him by the elbow − he doesn’t insist, he only asks. With a sharp and abrupt move Regis stumbles away from him like from a hot iron, and pleads him in a voice painfully distorted to linger no more. The dwimeryt shackles snap shut and tight, hurting obscurely even before the magic hidden in the metal wakes up, a tiny innocent torture to add to the main one intended for those who were doomed to stay imprisoned here. Geralt checks the locks and briefly squeezes Regis’ chained hand: nails longer than they’re supposed to be, fingers thinner, softly squeezing in response.

The fight is bloody and tough; wherever he aims his sword, it always finds an enemy. The blade makes its way through an arched spine, dips into a knot of stiff muscles, cuts off a limb and sticks in the bones of disfigured pelvis. Geralt slips on the spilled guts. Turn around, again, like he’s on the ring; the ghouls whine, rolling and writhing while Igni scorches them, the blood rises up to his ankles. But this is not the worst thing here. The dirty claws that ripped his hip, the holes of eye sockets, the low roars of an ancient katakan finding his way out of the catacombs − these he can tolerate at least. But the cage above his head, shaking and rocking as if being torn from within; and the cries coming from it, let out neither by a human nor an animal − these make him feel like with every blow of the spellbound silver he slays not the horrendous creatures in front of him, with their gaping jaws, their desire to sever, to destroy the only living soul that got into their filthy den, but the prisoner up under the high ceiling, with desires way more dreadful.

He’s too hasty, and the cage meets the ground with a loud shriek and sparks. Regis throws himself at the metal bars, his face’s misshapen − it’s not his true form that makes it so hard to look at, it’s the depth of his suffering, the one that forces him to twist his hands at an impossible angle.

“I’m here.”

Regis charges at the sound of his voice and smashes against the bars. The crimson glares shimmer in the tar-black puddles; Geralt blows them away with Aard, spreading all over the paving stones and drying with heat, trying not to set the corpses ablaze and suffocate them both with a fetid smoke. A fragile crust covers the floor; Regis is breathing through his mouth now, drawing the weakening smell in, heavy and sear.

“I’m here,” Geralt repeats.

The saber-like claws fly up right at his face when he kneels down, theу are barely inches away from him, and Regis hisses in despair. Soon. Soon it will be over.

It’s so silent that Geralt can hear the rustle of his own eyelashes. Regis has grown slack in the chains, his chin dropped onto his chest. Geralt calls him by the name, catches his limp hand, so feeble like it doesn’t belong to his body, then sinks into the cage up to the shoulder, slowly putting Regis down until his back leans on the opposite wall. Regis is so exhausted he can’t even grab at him, when the cage door finally opens. His lips are thin and blue, his eyelids are flattering like moth wings, his eyes caved in, his speech is foreign and unclear. Geralt’s trembling − but this is Regis trembling in his arms. Geralt doesn’t know − he doesn’t know what he should do with a vampire whose thirst has been bestirred and suppressed but never quenched, and so he does the only thing that seems right − he gives him water. Regis gulps it down feverishly.

“Let’s get out of here. Come now...”

He can barely move his legs, and once they’re at the foot of the stairs Geralt has to carry him. Regis apologizes for his feebleness, but Geralt just clenches his teeth and asks him to hold it, save the strength. Their mares start to fidget nervously, smelling death. He climbs into his saddle, tying the other rein to his pommel, then easily pulls Regis up like a ragdoll. He strikes the horses off into trot. The weary body in front of him is swaying violently from side to side, Regis mutters something under his breath, almost unconsciously, then he suddenly twitches in convulsion and the water comes out his deceived stomach along with sangurium he took the day before. They ride slowly the rest of the way. Regis seems to have finally fallen asleep; Geralt guides his mare with one hand, holding him with another. He doesn’t look back to not disturb Regis, but he can still feel it with his nape − the piercing stare of the blind embrasures on the walls of the ancient ruins, now drunk with such a sacrifice the humans are unlikely to ever make.

**_***_ **

The steam coming from Resonance is stuffy and sticky, but it’s not the stench that wakes him up, it’s the touches of his witcher. Those who believe that witchers don’t have a soul and lack empathy, are languishing in a world of sorrowful, unforgivable delusions. His raven watchers − he doesn’t call them spies for he has a disdain for this word, owned by politics and court intrigues. His ravens told him once of the mercy the White Wolf showed a basilisk, an ungrateful and ferocious beast, and let it fly freely under protection of a rapturous count, without taking even a single crown from him. People mocked him. “A witcher who protects monsters?” Blinded by their own ignorance... And what about that repulsive wight in the lone mansion, ringing with spoons like a raspberry bush full of singing birds? He himself was chuckling at the reproving expression of cat’s pupils, picturing the forthcoming and obviously quite unavailing negotiations about the valuable ingredient. And then he listened, biting his own tongue, to the story about the lifted curse. It’s merely an ounce from all the stories, and only inside the tiny territory of Toissaint...

Geralt’s clothes still smell of necrophages’ guts, although he took his armor off and left it outside, probably somewhere on a tombstone with a faded name. But there’re also smells of horse sweat, and bear fat from the swords resting aside, and dragon leather of his shoulder belt, and an open wound, and an artery pulsing on his throat. He inhales, his nostrils flattering, and even a movement as simple as this one hurts like he’s been crashes by a marble slab. He knows that nothing threatens Geralt’s life right now except for the unpredictable effect of the potion, the witchers are endurant, and so his worries are unnecessary. And yet they never stop gnawing at him. Geralt asks how he feels and keeps looking for something in his lowered face, as if he, Emiel Regis, will ever dare to lie to him. People tell ludicrous legends about the cold-blooded White Wolf. But this tension in his voice is like a crossbow string, and his dry _“here, let me,”_ when Regis makes an attempt to clear some space for the ritual − all of it speaks many times louder than any tears or screams could do.

Geralt’s reaction to Resonance is immediate. The crossroads of veins become visible all over his pale face, they are of dark purple like the storm clouds before a tempest strikes, or like that spot on the skies where a calm evening melds into a moonless night, or like the bruises on a deadman. Then wither’s instincts kick in, he tries to sit up, but his body resists, falling back as if pushed by a giant spring; his fingers clench on a shedding pelt, his eyes roll up. He’s already _there_. Maybe all their efforts are just a waste of time and in the end of this sad story the witcher will have to do his duty for the human world to sleep tight at night. Maybe Regis’ foreboding, cold like a fish washed up on a shore, is true and soon another thin thread between him and his lost home will be cut forever. Sometimes there’s just no choice.

Geralt wrenches. The memories of another person are so strong, or the potion is too venomous, or the idea itself is a horrid mistake, an unjustified risk for Geralt. Regis doesn’t care about himself, he hasn’t for many years now, − but Geralt’s nature is still the human one, no matter how the mutations changed him, and it is still very fragile. He stretches like a string, his head starts to dangle as if troubled by an unseen nightmare, then his entire body begins to toss and turn severely. Regis moves closer, covers Geralt’s wet temples with his fingers, trying to hold him still. He can’t. Right now his weakness is his worst feature. Geralt wheezes, he sounds strangled; all the veins from his wrists to his neck are swollen as if there’s an evil taking roots inside of him, so ancient that it still remembers the echo of Conjunction, now growing fat on the poisoned witcher’s flesh. He jerks like on pins and needles, and Regis has to put Geralt’s head in his lap, stubborn to keep him from accidental injuries. In his own delirium Regis haven’t retained the dance of silver and flame, not even the words he was told, however now his intuition makes him say almost the exact same words, with an intimate, almost magical meaning.

“I’m with you, Geralt.”

Convulsions shake Geralt like a puppet in a caravan of a wandering circus. He starts scratching at his own throat, his nails now almost black.

“Geralt! _Geralt!_ ”

It’s impossible to wake a person up while Resonance is still in its full swing; someone else’s memory is a riddle and can whether fade in a wink of an eye or keep torturing for hours. Regis feels broken, feels bitter for not knowing how to intervene and interrupt the process. He can’t restrain the ecstatic hands, and so he does the only thing possible, covering the pulsing throat with his own palms. The irony is almost painful.

Slowly the fever retreats. The sharp and hurried breathing turns steadier, the net of veins flattens. Regis carefully moves the white locks out of Geralt’s face; he cuts his hair short, uneven behind his ears and wavy on its tips. The witcher startles for the last time and finally comes back to him. His eyelashes fly up and fall again, and suddenly as if searching for something to hold on to, with an unexpected strength he grabs Regis’ wrist, still stained with the rings the shackles gave it, and trustfully buries his face into his palm. Then his grip slackens. Geralt drifts into a healing lethargy, and Regis takes this chance to find some White Honey in the saddle bags. Apparently there’s none, so he mixes it himself, recovering his knowledge of witchers’ alchemy. The scent of honeysuckle is heavy in the evening; it grows on the farther edge of the cemetery, and just a short walk there and back to the crypt makes him more tired than he has ever been during all these years. He corks the vials up, leaving them among the damp rocks to cool down, wrapped in lichen so they won’t shatter.

The draughts are creeping along the floor, water is dripping in the corners; he covers Geralt with a blanket, and though it’s not necessary, it seems right since he doesn’t have energy to move him up onto the bed. Weakness and wait are not his enemies, they’re just temporary conditions he’s very well familiar with like some kind of old friends; however they are incongruous now and uninvited. He is a silent guardian to his witcher, dozing off just for a moment to wake up at the gentle sound of his name.


End file.
